HAMSTER TURBO Diskusia

Hello drayzen, thats not nice, I've heard that they charge large commissions too (FxOpen).

Dear HAMSTER TURBO subscibers, we are in a large drawdown once more. I want you to understand that I haven't changed anything in the way I trade. This strategy only works with that specific SL level and performs much worse in the long term with a larger or smaller one. Some of you may remember the VEGAS signal, where I had a 50 pips SL and it was often hit, enough to make the strategy worthless. So, this strategy will stay as it is and I strongly believe that it will be very profitable in the long run. I am presenting other alternative strategies and signals to find a way to deal with large drawdowns but these again are not holy grails. A perfect system doesn't exist, if we have large SL we will have a large winning percentage but this large SL will be hit sometimes. If we have a small SL level, we will be hitting it more often and the overall profitability may be a bit smaller, but you will be able to sleep better at night. In conclusion, we can't have it all, so we have to choose the best option that suits everyone's investment needs.

Also I welcome all those who suggest a different way of action or various changes in my strategy to present a better signal and if their performance is better in 6 months I will be the 1st to subscribe.

I will wait for today's orders as I usually do, but anyone who doesn't like the look of them, can close these positions after he/she Suspends* the signal subscription here: https://www.mql5.com/en/signals/subscriptions

* If you don't Suspend the signal subscription, the orders will re-open upon synchronization.

Thank you very much for your attention!

Eleni Anna Branou

Dear HAMSTER TURBO subscibers, the 2nd full margin stop out happened. I am really sorry about that and I deeply understand how you feel. Unfortunately this is the forex market and nobody can fight it. I will continue my work as I write in my signal's description. I will divide the sum of my remaining signal and back up funds in 4 parts and I will resume normal trading tomorrow.

Thank you very much for your attention!

Eleni Anna Branou

Hello, is it possible to close position by myself without affecting signal ?

what? is going on here?

eleanna74 posted:
Hello drayzen, thats not nice, I've heard that they charge large commissions too (FxOpen).

I never had an issue with their commissions, they're actually some of the lowest I could find for an ASIC regulated broker, and the reason I started with them, lower than ICM, though I am using .au accounts which might differ from their .com ones as they're separate businesses.
The concern are their real spreads. After running a spread monitor they were commonly much wider than what you see on websites like here, with some very wide blowouts during low liquidity times.

I'll preface by saying I don't know a lot about forex, charting, trading etc. I know enough to grasp basic concepts. I am very lazily trying to learn and am using signalstart for now to try and build my accounts.

At what point do you know you're in a bad trade and why don't you close them out earlier? From what I can see, you normally take profit around 5-6 pips but the losses you take completely blow the account (1/4 based on your suggested strategy)

Is this just bad analysis on that specific trade? It seems a couple of the signals I follow as potential future signals, including yours, had the same exact trade, very close to the same entry. The one I am currently using is actually still in the trade but in about a 30 pip drawdown.

Does anyone ever close out early when in this type of drawdown or do they trust their signal provider fully without any interventions?

You can close the trades manually, if you have disabled or suspend the signal subscription first.

Hi Eleni.

RSI is a good Indicator but some times it seems to work in Reverse...

eleanna74 posted:
You can close the trades manually, if you have disabled or suspend the signal subscription first.

What happens if you don’t do this? Will the position open again? I had this happen with an EA before. I’d close a ‘buy’ and it would just open a new buy instantly. It was quite funny actually.

Yes, the positions will be re-opened upon synchronization.

Mkvilly posted:
Hi Eleni.

RSI is a good Indicator but some times it seems to work in Reverse...

rsi è per un

RSI is a good indicator for a sideways movement.

Hello drayzen,

@drayzen

thank you a lot for the thorough answer. that was what I was looking/asking for. it seems you are an engineer, too ;-)
This helped me a lot! have some more comments/thoughts on that and also did some more research. see below.

drayzen posted:
I you enter 'ICMarkets-Live01' in the search here https://www.mql5.com/en/vps you can see a map showing the MetaQuotes server you'll connect to.
The map confirms IC Markets server to be located within Equinix NY4 at 755 Secaucus Rd, Secaucus, NJ.
https://www.equinix.com/locations/americas-colocation/united-states-colocation/new-york-data-centers/ny4/
Doing some detective work using Google Maps we can find that the MetaQuotes servers are located in a building at 10 Enterprise Ave N, Secaucus, NJ, 1.3km away.
https://goo.gl/maps/8imXaCCDF3v
Unfortunately I couldn't find any direct reference to a hosting provider at that address so I remain dubious as to it's legitimacy...
Also given the latency I see on my own server and it being slightly closer to Equinix NY4 than MetaQuotes server I have to seriously question their claim of 2.35ms as you typically need to be co-located to see latencies that low and by their own admission they are not.

Here I think that actually the claim of very small latency between MetaQuotes server and Equinix NY4 can be actually true. The explanation can be e.g. an optic fiber connection between MetaQuotes server and Equinix NY4. it's only 1.3km distance, as you said. I used the Google Maps link that you cited and switched to StreetView (see attached screenshot) :-) or the link
https://www.google.com/maps/@40.7797444,-74.0711288,3a,75y,313.15h,108.7t/data=!3m10!1e1!3m8!1sjtfA0V468XfXkd5IYQkK9w!2e0!6s%2F%2Fgeo0.ggpht.com%2Fcbk%3Fpanoid%3DjtfA0V468XfXkd5IYQkK9w%26output%3Dthumbnail%26cb_client%3Dmaps_sv.tactile.gps%26thumb%3D2%26w%3D203%26h%3D100%26yaw%3D291.18054%26pitch%3D0%26thumbfov%3D100!7i16384!8i8192!9m2!1b1!2i44
. what you can see is a lot of cables along the road between those two server farms. So it could be an explanation for the very low latency. and probably usdedicated servers are also connected in this way with Equinix NY4.

drayzen posted:
Another thing to possibly consider is the use of an ICM ECN account where all orders are forwarded to the Interbank market and thus incur a full networking round trip through ICM's liquidity providers and back for placement.
If you were to use one of ICM's 'Standard' accounts this could play out differently *if* (not guaranteed in any way) ICM internalize your order via their own market making, which would mean the trade never has to leave their servers and would be executed as fast as their systems can process it.
Though you've got potentially higher spread you'll have to cover, plus the potential threat of them stop-hunting your orders.

I have an ICM ECN account. The alternative way of thinking using Standard accounts for professional tradings to minimize latency is interesting. However, it would be too risky for me, since the liquidity at ICM servers in that area could be too small.

drayzen posted:
I haven't tried a MetaQuotes VPS as I since got my own dedicated server in NYC with US Dedicated https://billing.usdedicated.com/aff.php?aff=98 where I get ~10-15ms latency to IC Markets.
Their servers are located at 2 Emerson Ln, Secaucus, NJ, 1.2km away from Equinix NY4.
https://goo.gl/maps/C1PFqpTEe362
I tried a VPS a few years back and found that it struggled to work with just a few EA's running which is what I needed at the time, so got a dedicated server and haven't looked back.
Though if all you want to do is subscribe to signals then any VPS should be well fast enough.
The trick with US Dedicated is that it's much cheaper than those 'Forex specific' VPS/Dedicated server providers because it is an unmanaged service, so if something goes wrong you can't fix yourself you might have to trigger a remote reinstall of the OS, though it's pretty simple to install a few MT4/5 terminals via remote login...
Given it's about 1/4 the price of those managed services I'll take the small risk of that inconvenience.

thanks for this hint! usdedicated is indeed cheaper than dedicated VPS servers. I had chat with usdedicated and was able to measure a ping between one of their servers and Equinix NY4 and it was in the range of below 2ms (similar to what you reported).
Just for the record, it seems the price difference between them and dedicated fx VPs companies is not anymore factor of 4, it is more like factor of 2 (I compared with dedicated servers offered by BeeksFX and NYCServers, the companies ICM is working with). only Forex VPS dedicated servers are much more expensive. I need to analyze further, as IC Markets refunds you costs of such VPS server from 15 lots per months (basic server up to 35$). I chatted also with ICM and if you do more trades you can negotiate upgrade and they will refund you better server (next level is 30 lots/month). I need to see. as for now, I plan to go with a basic plan with one of those two companies as above and see how it goes (and hope ICM will refund the costs).
MQL5 virtual VPS seems for me too less flexible, similarly like you I want to have some additional EAs running next to the signals. One of the EAs would be to control drawdown of signal providers, just to be on the safe side - I might have a different level of what is an acceptable DD for me than the signal provider.
Especially after last drawdowns observed for the signal here, I'm sure I want to have control over it (even if this might result in potentially worse performance than signal provider's as in some situations I will close trades earlier with loss rather than wait and maybe earn some profit).
if you using such EA to control drawdown and can recommend one, it would be great. otherwise I found some candidates already, but need to test their reliability. Also, if you have a hint how exactly a combination of such EA and receiving signal needs to be setup (e.g. to prohibit that a new order will be automatically opened if my EA closed some orders), it would be of great help to me.

drayzen posted:
I found a few references to network communication in this article https://www.mql5.com/en/articles/618 which indicates it's the two broker's MT servers in direct connection, but with these guys you can never be certain what athey say is correct/true...
(...)

thank you for the explanation and the link. it is important for me to have a good overall understanding in order to take the right steps.

Dear HAMSTER TURBO subscibers, I am really very sorry and devastated from the outcome of these last few days. I did nothing different lately from what I was doing these past months, producing the results that you could all see. Last October for example we had a 196% growth in HAMSTER TURBO with EURUSD in a clear downtrend, having 27 buys and 3 sells, so the argument that this system must open buys on uptrend and sells in downtrend wasn't the case for this past period. The Hamster strategy opens more buys than sells, because its taking advantage of the London opening effect in EURUSD that usually drive the pair higher. Also I want to point out that the 2 margin stop outs we had in HAMSTER TURBO happened by only 2-3 points and then the price instantly retraced higher, indicating that our SL (margin stop out) level was a target that had to be hit. I really believe now that my HAMSTER signals and the Hamster EA and strategy in general is under attack, because it was a smooth and easy way for the small retail trader to make some profit. I will continue with this strategy as long as I can because I think that this bad period will pass and better times will be ahead. I apologize again to all of you for this situation, but I really feel that all this was something out of my control.

Thank you very much for your attention!

Eleni Anna Branou

Eleni,

I know, there are a lot of 'hater' comments about the recent huge losses and it's not easy for you.

I read all of them at MQL5 site and while there are many opinions, there is one comment which I found non-emotional and fact-bound:
https://www.mql5.com/en/signals/463727/review/1145104

Would you mind to comment on that particular post? I personally would be especially interested in knowing if trading against the trend is part of HamsterTurbo strategy or not and if you never trade against the trend in any of your other signals.

also in the cited review there is a comment on changing market and a potential need to adapt to that.
do you also see the market changing and adjusting to those changes or you don't agree with that?

thanks in advance,

Unfortunately, I've seen this many times before. Once the signal becomes big, like 3 or 4M in funds, it blows up. I think you are right about it being under attack, there is just too many people using the same strategy and someone with big wallet is betting against it. No amount of backtesting can predict this.

This is not your fault, but you should find some way out of this. I am sure you'll do fine in a long run, you are a good trader.

Hey Eleni!

Would u give us free month signal because of this drawdown? only those who suffered this...

I think it would be interesting for signalstart to disclose how many other paid subscribers are attached to a certain signal.

It would give a lot of insight into someones confidence in their own product simply comparing their monthly income from the signal and their account balance in which they use the signal.

I really don't have the technical ability to give refunds or free subscriptions (MQL5 and SignalStart rules). I also think that life always has a way to correct exaggerations, so a lower profile and fewer subscribers is the answer to that and I think we will get there.